Toys have evolved other the years. Some video games enable consumers to play with a physical toy in a virtual video game world. Physical toys include a tag which, when scanned by a reader, enables the video game to identify the toy. The tag used in the physical toy is typically a near field communication (NFC) tag that includes toy-identifying data/information. NFC is a short-range communication protocol. NFC is used in many applications including, for example, credit cards, posters, point of sale terminals, universal serial bus (USB) tokens, memory cards, and/or other objects.
Many mobile devices are now being produced with NFC scanning capability. Such scanning capability enables a user of the mobile device to, for example, scan a physical object (e.g., an NFC enabled movie poster) and retrieve information about the object (e.g., show times for nearby theaters playing the movie depicted on the movie poster). Some NFC radios include an emulation mode that enables emulation of a physical object such as a credit card, transit card, badge, etc. In such an NFC emulation mode, the radio appears to an NFC reader as if it is the physical object being emulated (e.g., a reader will interpret the mobile device as a credit card, transit card, badge, etc.)
A key concern of implementing an emulation system is security. Usage of an NFC radio is protected from applications executing on the mobile device by a secure element. The secure element in some known systems is a secure processor and memory environment where application code and application data can be securely stored, executed, and/or administered. In known systems, the secure element is implemented using a smart card chip.
The figures are not to scale. Wherever possible, the same reference numbers will be used throughout the drawing(s) and accompanying written description to refer to the same or like parts.